New equipment breathes life into playground
CAROLYN BOSTICK | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 1 month AGO
A park located on the corners of Pine and Second streets has gotten a facelift after a summer of hard work to replace and repair broken and used playground equipment.
CAROLYN BOSTICK/Press
A table was added to the park on Pine Street in Wallace after volunteers and city staffed worked throughout the summer to remove and replace old and broken equipment.
Carolyn Bostick has worked for the Coeur d’Alene Press since June 2023. She covers Shoshone County and Coeur d'Alene. Carolyn previously worked in Utica, New York at the Observer-Dispatch for almost seven years before briefly working at The Inquirer and Mirror in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Since she moved to the Pacific Northwest from upstate New York in 2021, she's performed with the Spokane Shakespeare Society for three summers. | September 19, 2023 1:00 AM
WALLACE — There’s only one playground in Wallace, and when the old equipment went beyond an acceptable amount of wear and tear, volunteers and city staff banded together to work toward giving the park a much-needed upgrade.
Dave Smith Motors and the Frank Morbeck Foundation helped raise funds for new equipment over the summer.
“The old equipment was worn out, and as usual, the city and volunteers stepped up to make the only playground in town shine once again. These projects don’t come together if a magnitude of people don’t help out,” park volunteer Amy Lynn said.
Over the summer, city crews removed the old equipment and volunteers assembled and installed the new pieces bit by bit. The Zanetti Brothers donated cement and Silver Valley Forest Products donated a load of wood chips to complete the list of supplies needed to get the park ready to be back in play for area children.
Lynn said the swings, merry-go-round and slide had been broken. Volunteers replaced the swings and merry-go-round and the city fixed the slide. A new table, monkey bars and a rocking frog element were added to the park site.
“A huge thank you to our donors and all the people who gave their time to spruce up our town,” Lynn said.
Her vision for the future of city recreation in Wallace is to develop more areas for kids to play and potentially add a couple of basketball courts or a pickleball court to the park holdings for residents to stay active.
"I am hoping that visitors and community members will realize that the city is working to make our town a place with things for kids to do and that redoing the park is the first step towards this. It took about two years to raise the money and get everything installed," Lynn said.
